This Coke commercial is, therefore, just another Gore-like phony fantasy designed to exploit viewer emotion and to turn our children into unthinking, easily-manipulated ignoramuses.

But politicians in Iowa are just as deceptive.

New York Sen. Hillary Clinton tells Iowa voters that she has been vetted and scrutinized and that she will produce “no surprises.”

But the Clintons continue to stonewall reporter requests to release all her official records as first lady during her husband’s presidency. She also refuses to release all her tax and health records. Why the secrecy, if “no surprises” are in such records?

We know lots about Mrs. Clinton. But much of what we know is bad: that she is a “congenital liar,” as William Safire of The New York Times wrote; a smug, imperious, self-righteous leftist; and a fake feminist who savagely attacked women

who told the truth about Bill Clinton’s predatory sexual behavior. Up to 49 percent of people polled say they would never vote for Hillary Clinton.

Capitalist-bashing populist John Edwards, who according to at least one poll has passed Sen. Clinton and might win the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses, pledged that he would take no special interest 527 money.

But in recent days, Mr. Edwards has benefited from $750,000 of Iowa TV ads paid for by 527s of the Service Employees International Union and Carpenter’s Union, two of the most radical left unions in America.

Roughly half of SEIU’s members are employed by government, and this union would profit mightily if a President John Edwards forced unionization on other government employees.

But even more frightening is Edwards’ backing from fellow trial lawyers.

Edwards, remember, accumulated his over 50 million dollar personal fortune as an ambulance-chasing lawyer, a courtroom dramatist skilled at using pseudo-science to sway juror hearts — shades of the coke commercial.

Some of Edwards’ most lucrative cases were won by wild medical claims he made in court that scientific research subsequently showed to be completely false. But slick, well-coiffured Johnny Edwards never gave back the tens of millions he pocketed that later propelled his political career.

Edwards’ career got a rocket assist during his 2004 presidential and then vice presidential runs: more than $9 million in start-up cash from fellow trial lawyers. Much of his campaign travel was via “lawyer learjet airlines,” nearly free private jets belonging to six law firms.

The average American family pays a hidden tax every year of at least $2,884 in the higher prices of everything from a hamburger to healthcare. This “trial lawyers tax,” is the added price you pay for thousands of goods and services because of litigation and measures to prevent shyster lawsuits.

Doctors, for example, will ask you take all sorts of costly tests — not for your health, but to cover the doctor’s backside if a bad outcome prompts a lawsuit.

Huge lawsuit judgments can be won as Edwards’ often did, not by the justice or scientific legitimacy of the case but by bamboozling the jury and by the sympathetic nature of the defendant. This has driven the price of your doctor’s malpractice insurance and your medical and health insurance costs into the stratosphere.

Rapacious trial lawyers like John Edwards have pushed the cost of health insurance out of reach for millions of Americans, a situation Edwards’ and others invoke not to limit how many millions of dollars trial lawyers can pocket but to call for socialized medicine.

Greedy trial lawyers remain among the biggest Democratic Party backers.

Being able to pull the puppet strings of Democratic lawmakers virtually guarantees that every new law, government regulation or congressional investigation will preserve and expand lucrative opportunities to file multimillion dollar lawsuits.

Democratic congressional leaders, for example, fought President Bush’s authorization of terrorist-linked overseas wiretaps by quietly refusing compromise on one issue — whether telephone companies that complied with this national security measure would be given immunity against trial lawyer lawsuits.

How lucrative can such lawsuits be? During the Clinton administration state and federal governments teamed up with private lawyers to sue the tobacco industry, squeezing this business for hundreds of billions of dollars. Hillary’s trial lawyer brother was mysteriously given a share of this booty, allowed almost retroactively to join the cabal of private lawyers each billing $7,000 per hour for work on this case.

The Clintons during their reign made clear that trial lawyers would be helped to plunder one fat capitalist target after another — tobacco, then the firearms industry starting with Smith & Wesson, then big alcohol, then the fast-food industry, and so on.

Such litigation is destroying American capitalism as well as tens of millions of worker jobs in America.

These lawyers are paving a superhighway to serfdom and socialism. Government, after all, can invoke its sovereign immunity against lawsuits.

But these Democrat-connected lawyers will become wealthy just as greedy John Edwards did. And working Americans will become poorer as the hidden trial lawyers tax soars past $10,000 a year. Coke, anyone?

The most heartwarming — and inaccurate — of commercials was back on TV at Christmastime. But the ads of politicians in Iowa now rival it for brazen falsehood and hypocrisy.This famous commercial opens with three polar bears — Pappa, Momma and cuddly cute Baby — looking down...